Omega is pushing for major expansion in the US, with nine stores slated to open across the country this week.

A Chicago boutique will be unveiled this Thursday (November 18), followed by other store launches in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Scottsdale, Ariz., Nashville, White Plains, N.Y., Hackensack, N.J., and Jacksonville, Fla.

The stores will offer Omega’s range of men’s and women’s watches, including the new Ladymatic line, for which Nicole Kidman is the official spokesperson.

Stephen Urquhart (below), Omega’s president, expects America to become Omega’s biggest market for corporate retail.

Nicolas Hayek, chairman and former chief executive of the giant Swiss watch-manufacturing firm Swatch, has died. He was 82.

As chairman of the Swatch group, Hayek cut a high profile in the world of Swiss watch-making and was one of the most well known Swiss business leaders.

In the 1980s, he transformed two Swiss watchmakers struggling to cope with Japanese competition into what would become Swatch, owning brands such as Breguet, Blancpain, Omega, Longines in addition to its eponymous Swatch line.

The Le Richemond Hotel in the Swiss city of Geneva claims it has become the first in the world to offer guests the service of a “watch butler.”

The Swiss hotel has introduced a new service for watch lovers by employing the services of Pierre Jacques, the head of Swiss watch boutique Les Ambassadeurs, to advise guests interested in Switzerland’s famous horology industry.

The “watch butler” is on hand to display particular timepieces as well as being able to arrange private tours to top-end timepiece manufacturing sites such as Vacheron Constantin, Roger Dubuis and Franck Muller.

Hublot has become the official timekeeper for the next two editions of the Fifa World Cup.

The Swiss watchmaker will sponsor the tournaments in South Africa this year and in Brazil in 2014, with its logo appearing on referees’ boards when they show substitutions and stoppage time.

It will also provide a limited edition official watch range for each tournament, and has signed legendary Argentina coach Diego Maradona as a brand ambassador.

Luxury watchmakers are going back to basics with classic designs, as industry players at the world’s biggest watch fair in Switzerland warned Wednesday that the “years of extravagance” were over.

While the industry is reporting a glimmer of recovery, watchmakers gathering in the Swiss city of Basel also noted that recovery was fragile and that the mood among consumers was far from the heady pre-crisis years.

“After several months of economic upturn, there are some positive signs,” said Jacques Duchene, head of the organising committee for the Baselworld fair which officially kicks off on Thursday.

Companies such as Hublot and the giant Swatch have declared that the sales have been “exceptional” so far this year.

Hublot chief Jean-Claude Biver said that January was “the best in history, just like February would be and probably March.”

However, Duchene also warned: “We should not be overly confident, because the global economic situation is still highly precarious.”

Apparently not everyone is feeling the bite of the recession. A European mogul has commissioned luxury Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin to create a one-of-a-kind $6.5 million timepiece which will automatically become one of the most expensive watches in the world.

The design, which may take years to complete, will be many times more precious than Vacheron’s Tour de l’Ile timepiece (picture above) created for the company’s 250th anniversary in 2005. Only seven pieces were produced at $1.5 million each.

The features of this time exquisite time piece include a perpetual calendar and leap year, star chart, celestial annual calendar, tourbillon regulator, sunrise and sunset indication, perpetual time equation, phases and age of the moon, substantial power reserve, multiple time zones and day-night indication, among others.

« If owning a regular Vacheron Constantin watch is the equivalent of owning a Rolls-Royce, then having this watch will be like having a garage full of them »